Rick Hightower

Part One of this article appeared in the July issue of JDJ (Vol. 4, issue 7) How can Java classes be used as scriptable components? DCOM, like CORBA, provides both static and dynamic invocation of objects. DCOM uses type library to provide metadata to do the dynamic invocation and introspection similar to CORBA's interface repository or Java's introspection mechanism. IDispatch, a standard COM interface that supports Automation (late binding), is great for scripting languages such as Perl, Python, VBScript, JScript and so on. The Microsoft JVM implements IDispatch automatically for all Java objects. Microsoft refers to this feature as AutoIDispatch. Before AutoIDispatch, Java programmers had to write their own IDL files. Now all we have to do is create a Java class. Any p... (more)

Programming Languages for the JVM

Back before Java became popular, I was a C++ bigot. I programmed in nothing but C++. I lived, ate and breathed C++. If it wasn't C++, it was rubbish. I thought C++ was the alpha and omega of object-oriented programming. I had "operator overloading" for breakfast, "templates" for lunch and "multiple inheritance" for dinner, and I always went back for seconds. Then a funny thing happened. I... (more)

NetRexx Programming for the JVM

What This Series Is About This article is Part 3 of an interactive series that discusses the many languages that compile and/or run on the Java platform. Java Developer's Journal invites you to vote for your favorite non-Java programming language in the JDJ forum. Your vote will decide which languages will be covered by the series, and in what order. A lot of languages work in the JVM, but... (more)

Interesting Times in the Java Enterprise

Robert F. Kennedy once said, "There is a Chinese curse which says, 'May he live in interesting times.'" The enterprise Java space is "interesting." Not too long ago, folks like Bruce Tate, Gavin King, and Rod Johnson were pushing lightweight frameworks such as Spring and Hibernate, and there is still a lot of true innovation going on with AspectJ, Spring, Hibernate, WebWork, JBoss (method... (more)

i-Technology Viewpoint: Google's GWT "May Change Web Development Forever"

Time is a brutal enemy of youth and exuberance. Time makes cynics of us all. Time is the universal truth serum that reveals all authenticity. Time will tell, but the announcement yesterday by Google may change the faces of AJAX development, strike that, Google's announcement may change web development for evermore. This cynic heard an announcement yesterday that changed his viewpoint and... (more)